Lady Beneath the Veil

Sarah Mallory

SECRETS AT THE ALTAR…When Gideon Albury lifts his new bride's veil he can't believe his eyes–this dark-haired dab of a girl isn't the blonde beauty he's been courting! Stunned, Gideon resolves to seek an annulment at the earliest opportunity, but to do so he must first make sure Dominique Rainault's virtue stays intact….Blackmailed into marrying Gideon by her despicable cousin, Dominique is just as keen to keep her distance from her unsettling husband. But despite their good intentions the marital bed beckons–and a stolen kiss could prove to be their undoing!

‘There, ‘tis done,’ said the vicar.

‘So it is.’ The Honourable Gideon Albury smiled down at his new wife. ‘I think we can dispense with this now.’

He reached for her veil, but she quickly put her gloved hand over his.

‘Not yet,’ she whispered.

He laughed. ‘Be careful, my love, I shall begin to think I have married a little prude!’

He expected to hear her delicious throaty laugh but she was silent, merely putting her fingers on his arm as he escorted her to the door.

After the darkness of the stone building the spring sunshine was almost blinding when they stepped outside. He stopped and turned to her again.

‘Now, Miss Propriety, let me kiss you … Good God!’ He stepped back, his eyes widening with horror as he looked down into the face of a stranger.

AUTHOR NOTE

The very first page in LADY BENEATH THE VEIL is, in fact, the very first idea I had for this story. I wanted to explore what would happen if a man suddenly found himself married to a woman he had never seen before. Of course this is not a new idea—throughout British history many sons and daughters of the aristocracy have been married off for political or economic reasons to virtual strangers—but this was to be no reasoned alliance: it was to be a cruel hoax.

You might think that no one would play such a trick … Well, one only has to look into history to see that life in Georgian England could be cruel and brutally short and, as if in response, the Georgians could be tough, crude and boisterous. There are the much-recorded practical jokes of Sir Francis Blake Delaval, of Seaton Delaval in Northumberland, who played the most outrageous practical jokes upon visitors.

Mechanical hoists were installed so that when unsuspecting guests were undressing the bedroom walls would suddenly be lifted up, exposing them. In one bedroom the bed could be lowered into a tank of cold water, and in another guests would wake to find everything upside down—the whole room inverted—with furniture suspended from the ‘floor’ and a chandelier rising up from the middle of the ‘ceiling’. It must have been a most unnerving experience. One elderly (but rich) widow was even persuaded to marry Sir Francis after a charade involving a fortune-teller and an ‘accidental’ meeting.

So I thought the marriage of Gideon and Dominique might well have happened—but what about the happy-ever-after? Could such a marriage work when it was not the fairytale wedding that either of them had wanted? Well, they struggle, of course, but I think I have found a way for them to resolve their differences and find happiness together. I hope you agree. Please feel you can contact me at www.sarahmallory.com (http://www.sarahmallory.com)

Lady Beneath the Veil

Sarah Mallory

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

SARAH MALLORY was born in Bristol, and now lives in an old farmhouse on the edge of the Pennines with her husband and family. She left grammar school at sixteen to work in companies as varied as stockbrokers, marine engineers, insurance brokers, biscuit manufacturers and even a quarrying company. Her first book was published shortly after the birth of her daughter. She has published more than a dozen books under the pen-name of Melinda Hammond, winning the Reviewers’ Choice Award from singletitles.com for Dance for a Diamond and the Historical Novel Society’s Editors’ Choice for Gentlemen in Question. Sarah Mallory has also twice won the Romantic Novelists’ Association RONA Rose

Award for The